As enrollment grows, Texas State is adding two new dorms and introducing plans to accommodate on-campus housing options for upperclassmen.
Texas State’s on-campus housing currently fits 9,042 students, including the recently opened Alamito and Cibolo Halls, according to Bill Mattera, executive director of the Department of Housing and Residential Life (DHRL). By 2027, that number is projected to increase to 11,300 with the addition of Canyon Hall and a second Hilltop Housing complex.
Texas State University Provost Pranesh Aswath said enrollment is also expected to steadily increase through 2027, driven by the state’s rising high school graduation rates. On-campus housing plans are designed to align with this anticipated growth.
Canyon Hall will begin housing freshmen in fall 2025 with the addition of 942 beds and will be located between Supple Science and San Marcos Hall.
“Canyon [Hall] helps us quite a bit, it gives us another 942 beds which essentially allows us to fully be okay with the first-year class,” Mattera said.
Similar to Alamito and Cibolo, Canyon Hall will be another seven-story building with single and double occupancy rooms and will be available at the lowest base rate of $3,405 a semester. Mattera said if on-campus rent increases by fall 2025, it will be capped at a maximum of 3.5%.
However, Canyon Hall will not come with integrated parking. Mattera said while there are plans to increase parking availability, that timeline is not on par with the opening of the new dorms.
“[Parking] will not come as fast as we want it to and it’s not that we’ve never thought about it, but our priority in the housing piece is we have students who don’t have beds so we’ll figure out the beds then we’ll figure out the parking,” Mattera said.
Hilltop Housing 2 is another on-campus housing complex slated to open in fall 2027. While it is still in its early design phases, it will bring in around 1,300 beds and be located on the site of Arnold and Smith Halls on Russell Circle, the two dorms that shut down in May. Part of Smith Hall has already been demolished, according to Mattera.
“…Our hope is to eventually start to get some halls in the mix for upper-class students as well and Canyon and then Hilltop 2 allow us to do that,” Mattera said.
Upperclassmen have three options to live on campus: The Vistas, Sanctuary Lofts and Bobcat Village. Beginning the week of Nov. 18, Texas State is introducing a new system for upperclassmen called ‘Same-Same,’ to replace what used to be the housing lottery. The system will allow students already living in Bobcat Village, Vistas or Sanctuary to keep that same apartment and room.
“Once people have the ability to keep their apartment, residents can go see what’s available elsewhere, and kind of pop around and if they don’t see anything else they like, their apartments will be available because they did ‘Same-Same,’” Mattera said.
After ‘Same-Same’ Mattera said DHRL is introducing ‘Same-Different’ which allows upperclassmen to stay on campus but switch their apartment or unit. Once both processes are done, DHRL will open it up to other students to pick a complex on a first-come first-serve basis.
However, the strain on on-campus housing, brought on by a record-breaking freshmen class of 8,165 students, 7,219 of which live on campus, forced some to room with their resident assistant (RA), as previously reported by The Star.
One of those students is Jahaira Hernandez, accounting freshman, who has been living with her RA in College Inn since August.
“I wasn’t excited when I found out I would be with an RA,” Hernandez said. “I’m a first-gen so everything I learned about college was from the internet and movies, so I was really looking forward to having an authentic college experience, and then coming here it was a lot different.”
Mattera said the long-term goal is to provide enough beds so that RAs and freshmen no longer need to share living spaces. However, DHRL will continue to include this arrangement as a possibility in RA contracts.
“If our choice is between an RA roommate or a student not having a bed, we are always going to choose the student having the bed,” Mattera said.
Mattera also said Texas State always has its contract with the Holiday Inn ready in case they need to place freshmen in hotels come fall.
Hernandez lives in a suite-style dorm at College Inn, where she and her RA share a bathroom and common area, but each has a private room. But she has seen overcrowding impact other aspects of her life as a freshman.
“The whole overcrowding thing was caught by surprise by everybody, nobody was expecting it. Nobody realized it until everybody got to campus and the whole parking issue,” Hernandez said.
Alumnus Josiah Reyes lived on-campus in 2013 in Hornsby Hall then again in 2021 in Arnold Hall and said he’s seen overcrowding impact San Marcos as a whole.
“What I will say is that San Marcos, it didn’t feel as large,” Reyes said. “Now with all the new dorms and apartments, it’s less green than it was just a decade ago. There’s still plenty of trees, there’s still plenty of woods, but now there’s a lot more building.”
Mattera said he plans for Canyon Hall and Hilltop Housing 2 to be the end of the university’s plans for building new dorms.
“Then we’ll need to start talking about renovation and updates to other buildings,” Mattera said. “I hope by 2027 first-year students will still live with us and we have enough in our inventory that upper-class students can stay with us if they want.
